Origination

The number of home listings collapsed to the lowest level on record, leaving “nearly all of the shelves empty,” Glenn Kelman said in the company’s latest home sales report.

The mortgage brokerage franchisor added 30 operating offices and had its best year yet for unit sales.

But profitability may have peaked. Rocket reported a 4.41% profit margin on newly originated loans last quarter but told investors on Thursday to expect margins on new loans this quarter to be around 3.6% to 3.9%.

The automation is more prevalent but the net adoption rate is low, the Stratmor Group found.

A gauge of U.S. pending home sales fell to a six-month low in January as buyers competed for a limited number of properties.

With extreme winter weather about to give way to ballooning insurance and mortgage forbearance claims in Texas, servicers will need to get through their pipelines with urgency while weeding out fraud.

After several weeks of resistance, mortgage rates are now moving in lockstep with the recent increases in the 10-year Treasury yield.

Servicers could be dealing with approximately 1.8 million distressed properties when the latest forbearance extension ends in June, Black Knight said.

Purchases of new single-family homes increased 4.3% to a 923,000 annualized pace in January from an upwardly revised 885,000 rate in the prior month, government data showed Wednesday.

Berkeley is the latest city looking at opening up exclusive neighborhoods to more housing as the region struggles with exorbitant rents and home prices and increasing homelessness.